


Ripple Effect

by Fortheloveofhillary



Category: Hillary Billary
Genre: Forgiveness, Marital Issues, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-06-01 00:17:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15130910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fortheloveofhillary/pseuds/Fortheloveofhillary
Summary: The evening after the second Clinton/Trump debate, Bill and Hillary finally have a conversation that has been years in the waiting.





	Ripple Effect

It was there and she knew it was. The pain, the rage, the sense of injustice she knew she must’ve been feeling. It churned and roiled just under the surface of the thin shield of numbness that kept it from overtaking her…at least for now. Later it would hit her full force… and she would handle it then. But not now. No. For now she sat on edge of the hotel bed in a mildly dissociated state.  

 She’d prepared herself for Hell tonight; had steeled her mind and heart for every nasty, rotten sucker- punch tactic she’d ever seen used in campaigning – and, given her opponent, perhaps a few she hadn’t.  The ambush tonight, however, constituted a whole new level of foul play, sinking down from the already oft-putrid political drainpipe right into the sewage itself.

She had prepared for so many things, but she hadn’t prepared for _them_. In all honesty, she knew she never could have. No amount of prep would have made that experience better. How could they stand themselves sitting there on the Idiot’s side, supporting him despite his admitted crimes all while whipping her- whipping Bill- for things that were unsubstantiated at best?

 She’d kept her cool as she’d long trained herself to do and she hoped it would pay off. Philippe had been tough on her during mock debate sessions, pressing and twisting, jarring and stabbing. He’d done all he could to push her buttons, to frustrate and infuriate her, allowing her the opportunity to snap back at him privately so she wouldn’t feel so inclined to do so when the cameras were rolling live. But he’d also done it to expose the cracks in her armor so they could layer on the protections. As a team, they had done their best to brainstorm on the Trump’s angles and to formulate rebuttals, counterpoints, and deflective statements. They put in extra hours sharpening Hillary’s already stellar debate skills. They had thought of _everything_ \- or so they’d thought.

Whether or not she’d succeeded tonight depended up on who was doing the analysis. It was true that the vast majority of pundits were already touting her the debate winner but it was a cold comfort. Bitterly cold, in fact.  Here in this hotel room she held no feeling of victory or self-satisfaction with a job well done. Instead, she felt shaken to the core and haunted by the past 90 minutes as all of it replayed itself over and over in her mind.

 Trump’s insults and baiting had been easy enough to ignore at first. After all, his insecurity- bred machismo was nothing new to her. Just a new incarnation of the same old shit.

 Trump was going to have to try a whole lot harder if he wanted to ruffle her feathers. Decades of public opinion and political rough and tumble had thickened her skin while sexism and misogyny had forced her to develop and perfect an ability to fend off male antagonism. These days, letting the ignorance roll off of her back had become as natural as breathing. She’d just kept her mind laser-focused on the task at hand, internally repeating the many mantras she’d created over the years to keep herself balanced. Tonight she added one more: _Don’t let him in your head. Remember why you’re here. Remember The People.  Remember Mom. Remember Eleanor._

Then the stalking began. This development was new and entirely unwelcome as it cast a dark and twisted atmosphere over the stage and the entire venue. Unpleasant chills erected goose bumps on her skin as he invaded her personal space time and again- looming, blocking and following her around the stage. Adding to his game of physical intimidation were his incessant interruptions when it was her turn to deliver remarks. There was something foreboding about the way he attacked her both subtly and overtly.  There was also something sickeningly incredible about his ability to make her skin crawl; to make her feel violated and soiled without ever touching her at all. 

And then… the women. Juanita, Paula, and two others presented as Bill’s supposed victims for the purposes of not only deflection from his own publicized indecency days earlier, but to hurt and humiliate Hillary and her entire family.  Hillary felt her face redden, hot with justifiable rage, not allowing herself to look at her husband or daughter. She knew if she saw their facial expressions, she would come completely undone. This was past incivility. It was sadistic psychological warfare. Despite the enormity of the distraction, she’d somehow managed to maintain her course and even most of her cool, level-headed exterior – but just barely.  From that moment on it was a nearly intolerable internal battle to concentrate. No matter how much she tried shutting out the foul energy, it kept seeping in. It took every ounce of her inner strength to keep her attention focused on the audience and moderators who were ostensibly indifferent to the fact that her personal boundaries were being blatantly disregarded. The bastards.

 She’d wanted to not only confront Trump, but to emasculate him. To air every dirty secret about that tyrant’s life she knew about. She wanted to call him out for the bottom- feeding psychopath in a suit that he was right there in front of the cameras, the nation and the world. She wanted to scream at him to get the hell away from her.  But she didn’t. She _couldn’t_. They would eat her alive if she did. The barrage of cynical, sexist, and unfair criticism would abound from every depraved and bloodthirsty corner if she let loose:

_Hillary Clinton couldn’t handle the pressure._

_She was quick to anger. Is she maybe more thin-skinned than Trump?_

_Could she handle the intense pressure of the presidency?_

No. She couldn’t afford it. Her campaign had already taken so many brutal hits that she didn’t know for certain whether or not it would survive. She had to sell herself as the level-headed, even- keel candidate contrasting the 71 year- old man baby as he tripped over himself in disjointed and unhinged tirades about subjects of which he had little to no knowledge.

To cope with the surreality of the evening and her mounting rage, she simply tightened her grip around the microphone, each time imagining it was his neck. And then, contrary to every impulse in her body and soul, she _smiled._ Smiled despite the fact that she knew she was suffering his detestable, slithering presence because she _had no choice_ \- and she knew _he_ knew it, too. She could see his thinly veiled gloating and her stomach lurched each time he came near. In those moments of strained self- control, she didn’t feel powerful. She felt oppressed.  Subjugated. Demoralized. The humiliation he’d subjected her to here went way beyond even the most contentious of political battles. Tonight Trump had crossed a line of human decency in a very extreme and personal manner. He had violated her, her husband, and her _child_. She would never forgive this offense. That, in and of itself, was something else she would never get over. He’d made her hate him. _Hate him_. In all her life, she’d dealt with many people she distrusted and didn’t particularly like. There were some for whom she felt a degree of apathy. But hating another person was something she’d never allowed herself to do...until now. Hatred, her Methodist faith had asserted, damaged the hater. Though she knew that was true, Trump was different.  His vicious inhumanity in general made her feel and think thoughts that terrified her-and she detested that part of herself that couldn’t help it.

As for the women on his side of the audience, she felt less anger than pity. They were truly pathetic. Here they were, willing pawns, stupid in their faux conviction that they were somehow furthering a movement by supporting a monster who would force himself on any one of them if given a chance. It was nearly comical given that they’d just done more to set women back than they could imagine. A group of “assaulted” women sitting unified in support of a self- proclaimed assaulter. They were, in fact, publicly negating their own credibility just as much as the claims they’d made against her husband- claims for which none of them had ever provided a shred of evidence. Yet, despite the absence of facts to support the claims, too many believed them…just because they _wanted_ to.

A few feet behind her, her husband sat on the opposite side of the bed with his elbows propped on his knees, his head viced between his long-fingered hands. Tears, hot and acidic, seared his eyes but he wouldn’t let them fall. He had no right to let them fall. He would be as strong as she needed him to be no matter how much he was dying inside. He owed her that.

His body hummed with both impotent rage and intense but useless guilt. His heart broke and sunk into the pit of his stomach. This was his doing. Though he’d never touched any of these particular women in the audience tonight, it was the women he _had_ touched years before- especially that one particular woman – that kept the slander and smearing in a constant replay loop. One mistake, one momentary lapse of reason had cost him- and more importantly, _her_ \- forever.

They both knew there was truth to that narrative but her deep love for him would never allow her to see it that way and she’d never allow such cruel words, no matter how true, fall from her mouth. It was also true that her lashing out would accomplish nothing to change the past. Still, Bill sometimes wished she’d just say it and give him what he knew he deserved. It was a benevolently unfulfilled wish and would likely always be.

Even so, a nauseating anxiety remained within him now. The silence between them was a palpable and he was he was afraid to break it for fear of what it might unleash. He closed his eyes and listened to her breathe until he could stand the suffocating silence no longer.   

          “I’m sorry”, Bill said to her finally, his voice barely audible. “I am so very sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Hillary said turning her back still to him. She tried and failed miserably to sound unbothered. “You don’t have any reason to be sorry, Bill. Not like it’s your fault.”

Bill scoffed quietly. “You and I both know that isn’t true.”

“Bill-“

“C’mon, Hillary. You know what I’m talking about.”

Hillary turned around to look at him, sadness in her blue eyes as she took in the sight of his face. He looked as drawn and tired as she felt. His eyes met hers in a dejected expression full of shame before turning his head away and returning it to his hands.  She took in a deep breath and let it out. Much as she wished this wasn’t happening now, this needed to be addressed. She knew what happened tonight hurt him almost more than it did her. Even after all these years, he still internalized things and made himself responsible for things when he shouldn’t and it broke her heart.

Against her will, her mind traveled back to their time in the White House. It quickly rifled through all of the unpleasant accusations that had surfaced from 1992 all the way through August of 1998: Gennifer Flowers, Whitewater, travelgate, Paula Jones, Juanita Brodderick, and, of course, Monica. Internally she couldn’t help but cringe remembering the pain she felt that Saturday morning when he’d woke her from a deep and pleasant sleep to rip her heart out with the truth. It had been the worst morning of her life. There was no question about that. However, no matter how devastated or infuriated she’d been all those years ago, it was a distant memory now. Since then they’d been blessed with so many wonderful experiences, that those painful and challenging times seemed another lifetime ago. Against the backdrop of 40 years of the love, laughter, sharing, and building that had been their marriage, the tryst itself had been a blip on the radar screen. True, the ensuing and public nightmare that followed was not so easily forgotten but even the memory of that didn’t sting as badly as it once did. As for tonight, Trump’s side show had been enraging, dehumanizing, and unjust but it wasn’t Bill’s fault.  But Bill saw it differently. She saw how he tormented himself still over his past mistakes and she wished he wouldn’t. Everyone had the right to be imperfect, to learn, grow, and to continue on without being brow-beaten endlessly for years on end. Everyone had a right to a fresh start. Even him… _Especially_ him.  She stood up and circled around the bed to where he sat, pulling up a sitting chair so she could sit and face him. She took his hand in hers and brought it up to her lips before pressing it against her cheek.

 “Bill, don’t do that.” She said softly, her soft blue pools of love looking deep into his blue-gray irises. “Don’t let tonight get under your skin. This isn’t about you or what you did or didn’t do. It’s not even about me. It’s about him and them. It’s about their depravity, and their hatred and ignorance and fear… It’s about what this country has deteriorated into. C’mon, you know that, Babe.”

A squeeze of her hand was the only response he could muster as his eyes shifted to the side in an attempt to stop a flood of tears.

 “I want you to have this opportunity, Hillary.” His voice cracked and croaked as he looked back at her. “You are _so_ close now. You’ve worked your entire life for this-earned every single bit of it. You shouldn’t have to… pay for what I did or for what they _think_ I did. You have the right to be judged apart and separately from me- and you’re not. It’s wrong, Hillary. It’s wrong and I can’t tell you how much it pisses me off.” He shook his head, frustration reddening his face. He thought for a moment, his face softening again. “I have always considered myself one of the luckiest men on Earth that, despite everything I put you through, you stayed with me… And I would never trade my life with you for anything.” On the last word, his composure collapsed as tears overflowed his eyes and spilled onto his cheeks. “But, dammit, Hill, I gotta tell ya that at times like this I wish to Christ you _had_ left me then-so I couldn’t hurt you anymore. Because the truth is that you deserve this, you’ve earned it, and you’d be phenomenal at it. You’d be ten thousand times the president I was.”

“You were a damn good president, Bill.”

“Yeah, well, that’s fine.” He shrugged. “But you’d be an even better one… And if you lose this because of me, I-”

 

“Don’t” she said with a firm kindness as she wiped a tear from his cheek. Her eyes swam with her own emotion as she leaned forward to softly kiss his lips. “Look, I want you to listen to me.” A steely expression settled across her face letting him know she was holding nothing back. “I regret _nothing,_ Bill. What happened tested us back then, that’s for sure. I was hurt, I was pissed, I was lost for a while. So were you. It was a miserable and painful time. But we survived it, we learned from it, and we moved on with our lives - and I’m so glad we did.” A gentle smile slowly came over her face.

 Bill’s eyes welled yet again with tears of a different kind. Tears of adoration, gratitude and love. Here she was, taking the beating of her life, forced to re-live past torments that stemmed from his carelessness. His selfishness. He knew how easily she could have raged at him, shouldered him with blame and shame. He would have understood if she had. But no. Instead, here she was, thinking of his feelings and comforting him. Seeing the best in the worst. That was the definition of love in its purest and most beautiful form and he was in awe, as he always had been, of her capacity for such deep love and seemingly inexhaustible selflessness. “I don’t live there anymore, Bill.” She continued. “I haven’t for a long, long time. I wish you wouldn’t, either…” She paused, eyes still on his to ensure her words were getting through to him. “Those women out there tonight were pawns,” She continued. “They allowed themselves to be exploited for political purposes. You are not responsible for that, Bill.”

“I get that but it makes me sick.” Bill said through a clenched jaw, now wiping the tears away from his face. “I could understand if it was me running, but to do that to _you_? I just couldn’t believe it. It just goes so far beyond… I mean, getting that personal, hitting you that far below the belt, was very tough for a husband to stomach.”

Hillary nodded in understanding with a smirk. “I know all about it, Mr. President. You might remember I did my time on that side of the fence as well.”

Bill nodded in acknowledgement. “Yes, I know, I remember. But I don’t think anybody ever hit me quite this hard…” He trailed off for a moment as his thought reconnected to his earlier sentence. “And as for _that_ son of a bitch, it was everything I could do not rush that stage and punch him right in the throat.”

“I can certainly understand that”, Hillary grinned. “I wanted to do the same thing,” She raised an eyebrow mischievously. “except I’d have aimed a lot lower.”

And there it was. That endearing, wry and intelligent humor that had the ability to lighten even the darkest of moments. They shared a chuckle, lightening the heavy air in the room. As they giggled he took her in. God, she was so incredibly beautiful when she smiled and laughter filled her eyes. There was a love within him for her, a fascination with her that would never, ever be diminished. Even after nearly half a century together, there was a part of her that remained enigmatic and elusive. Some undefinable “x” factor that kept him attracted and captivated. She would always possess him in a way he couldn’t explain or even express. But he knew that he wanted for _nothing_ so long as she was in his life. He always knew he could never live a day without her. She was his girl. _His Hillary_ … until death did them part.

 “Anyway,” Hillary said, recovering. “I almost feel sorry for those women from the standpoint that there must not be much else in their lives they value if this is how they want to spend their time- if attacking you and me is their focus.”

“I know. It’s definitely sad.” He wiped the remaining moisture from his cheeks and studied her face intently. “Hill, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for everything I did back then that affects you now…And I don’t mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I need to know the truth- even if it hurts. And please don’t protect my feelings like you always do… Have you _really_ been able to put it past you?”

 _Dear God, Bill, when will you_ _believe-_

Her train of thought stopped short and her heart contracted in her chest as a stark realization came into focus. Since the fallout, she had thought she’d done everything to convey that she’d put it in the past. In counseling, they’d hashed out many of their relationship deficits, and after those sessions, she had never brought any of it up again.

_We cannot move forward if we keep looking behind us._

Their relationship had eased back into a normal and satisfying rhythm. Better than before, in fact. She’d honestly thought he’d known and that he had come to realize she’d stayed because she wanted to-because she loved him in the same undying way that he loved her.  But, in retrospect, it was now clear the door had never quite closed for him and she suddenly knew why. She had moved forward and worked on the fixes but she’d never come right out and said what he really needed to hear. Never eye to eye, clearly and concisely with unvarnished and raw sincerity. It was time she did. Emotion welled again within her forcing tears of her own.  She allowed them to fall without attempting to wipe them away as she finally granted him the closure she’d unintentionally withheld for two decades.

 “Yes, Honey.” She nodded affirmatively.  “You see, they don’t get to decide how I feel. They don’t get to make that choice for me. I won’t allow that…But please hear me, Bill. _I forgive you_ for the affair. I forgave you a long time ago. I’m sorry it took me so long to say it this plainly. I didn’t realize how much you needed me to come out and say it. I’m sorry, Sweetheart. I guess I thought you knew.”

Bill shook his head, his bottom lip quivering despite himself. A dam was about to bust wide open.

She brought a hand up to softly caress his cheek. “I don’t hold any anger about it anymore. I promise you, I really don’t. I made peace with all of my hurt feelings years ago.  And it’s long past time for you to make peace with it all too. It’s time for you to forgive _yourself_.”

Bill retrieved her hand from his cheek and held it to his lips. She couldn’t have been more sincere. As her words sank in, a weight that had kept him anchored to self-loathing for years now was dislodging and drifting away.  For years he’d been sure she still held it against him- even if she refused to admit it even to herself. He’d sworn he’d detected in her an air of resentment and anger, sure that he felt her eyes burning into him when his back was turned, stabbing him with daggers full of venomous guilt. But as he now looked back at her, seeing nothing but love and grace, he realized none of that condemnation had ever come from her. It hadn’t come from the outside at all. The truth was that every ounce of shame and harsh judgment had come from within himself.

Now, he sat with his eyes wide and incredulous, feeling like a long-time prisoner who just now discovered he’d always had the cell door key.

 _I forgive you_.  … _Forgive yourself_ …

Suddenly, a sob erupted from deep within him, his wife catching him in her arms as he fell forward. As his face came to rest in the soft, perfume-scented skin of her neck, he broke down and wept. Gutwrenching, body-wracking sobs bubbled up  straight from the depths of his soul. For the first time in forever, he felt a sense of relief. Absolution and redemption, long sought for and awaited, had now become reality.

Unconsciously, they stood to pull each other closer. Hillary held tight to him, her hand stroking his hair as she placed soft kisses on his cheek. “I love you, Bill Clinton.” She whispered in his ear, unable to hold back a sob of her own. “I love you with my whole heart.  Nothing and nobody can or will ever change that...And I need you to love you the same way I do. I need for _you_ to let go of the past now- because I need you here in the _present_ with me.”

Suddenly, Bill pulled back to face her, his eyes burning into hers through his tears. Without warning, he crashed his mouth into hers, sweeping her into a long, languid kiss. Immediately melting against him, she reciprocated with fervor. After a few moments, he reluctantly released her lips from his and brought his forehead to rest against hers. They stood there in one another’s arms enjoying a calm, quiet intimacy. Time seemed to suspend and the very atmosphere in the room seemed to have changed instantly; it was lighter, more airy, easier to breathe. For Bill, this change was even more noticeable as he took in the deepest breath he’d taken in years… maybe ever.  

“Thank you” Bill said finally, the remaining vestiges of his sobbing catching his breath. His voice was full of a tender huskiness that moved something deep within her. “I love you, Wife. I love you with every fiber of my being. I don’t deserve you- I never have. But I adore you and-“

Surprising even herself, Hillary quickly brought her lips to his, cutting him off mid-sentence. Bill’s hand came up to cradle the back of her head as he used his other arm to pull her tighter to him still. She pulled back finally, her blue eyes rendering him speechless as she gazed into his once more. “I know.” She whispered with one last tender peck. “I _know_.”


End file.
